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Our annual Freud Memorial Lecture is a special event for our Department, which attracts quality speakers from a variety of fields.

It brings together academics, students and the public to engage in lively debates on the fascinating work of Freud.

This year

‘Has Freud been falsely scientised? Reflections from the editor of the new Standard Edition.’

It is widely claimed that the authorised translation of Freud – the Standard Edition of his complete works – tendentiously distorted his writing to make it sound more scientific. For example, the ordinary German word for ‘I’ becomes ‘ego’ in the official translation, ‘occupation’ becomes ‘cathexis and ‘attachment’ becomes ‘anaclisis’. When the editor of the Revised Standard Edition – which appears this year – confronted this question, he was led to surprising conclusions, which he will report in this lecture.

Professor Mark Solms holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. He is an 'A1' rated researcher of the National Research Foundation and recipient of numerous prizes and honours, such as the Sigourney Prize and Honorary Fellowship of the American College of Psychiatrists. He is Director of the Science Dept of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

He has published 350 articles in both neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals, and he has authored eight scientific books. The Brain and the Inner World was translated into 12 languages. His collected papers were published recently as The Feeling Brain. He is the editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols) and Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 vols).